In a statement issued by its president, IATSE Local One stressed that the current situation is a lockout rather than a strike and that the Metropolitan Opera, rather than giving its craftspeople work, has outsourced fabrication of sets, costumes and the like for three future productions to the West Coast and the UK. – OperaWire
NewsNation Is Supposed To Be An ‘Unbiased’ Alternative To Fox, MSNBC, And CNN. Almost No One Is Watching It.
Execs at Nexstar, the country’s largest owner of local TV stations, had research saying that consumers wanted a source of nonpartisan news. So the corporation turned its cable outlet, WGN America, into NewsNation, offering five hours of news programming every evening to 75 million homes. Nielsen says NewsNation averages 27,000 prime-time viewers a night. (That’s nationwide.) Several top editorial hires have quit, and there are allegations that the network is not as unbiased as it claims to be. – Los Angeles Times
Disney Apparently Decided Not To Pay Some Authors Their Royalties
And now there’s a task force trying to get the authors of novels in the Indiana Jones, Buffy, and Star Wars universes the royalties for recent sales of their books. Disney, according to author Alan Dean Foster, told him that when they bought Lucasfilm and the rights to Foster’s novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope, first published in 1976, that didn’t mean he would continue to earn royalties from the still in-print, still selling book. The Mouse “argued that it had purchased the rights, but not the obligations of the contract.” – The Guardian (UK)
Theatre Festivals Are Reopening In The UK. But What Should Their Role Be?
Many will grapple with an uncertain theatre landscape and uncertainty over how audiences might behave as society opens up. And this is at a time when cities have been devastated by the pandemic, and many are still reeling from the loss to life and livelihoods. – The Stage
Poetry Foundation Picks A New President
Michelle Boone’s appointment “may mark a turning point for the foundation, which has been criticized as insular and slow to respond to changing times. In addition to serving as commissioner for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Boone is wrapping up her tenure as chief program and civic engagement officer for Navy Pier.” – Chicago Tribune
Bard Center Explores Connections Between Arts And Human Rights
The two-year, interdisciplinary MA plans to host in-person classes at Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson campus and welcomes “current and aspiring activists, artists, and researchers” who are committed to “understanding, exploring, and furthering the growing encounter between human rights and the arts.” – Hyperallergic
Is Music Universal Or Not? Depends On What You Mean
Kevin Berger: “In the past two years, the debate over whether music is universal, or even whether that debate has merit, has raged like a battle of the bands among scientists. The stage has expanded from musicology to evolutionary biology to cultural anthropology. … My recent adventures in the fields of music research have instilled in me … a new appreciation of what universality in music really means.” – Nautilus
How Imagination Drives Answers
The sense of wonder we get when looking at a star-studded sky is a powerful one, even today an intense and even emotional experience, connecting us perhaps with an echo of that ancient amazement shared by thousands of generations before us. But perhaps too this feeling is not enough to understand the origin of this deep-seated, urgent, primordial, almost innate need to seek an answer to the big questions. – Nautilus
The Young Pipsqueak Professor Who Changed The Way Everyone Thought About Homer’s Epics
“Milman Parry was arguably the most important American classical scholar of the 20th century, by one reckoning ‘the Darwin of Homeric Studies.’ At age 26, this young man from California stepped into the world of Continental philologists and overturned some of their most deeply cherished notions of ancient literature. Homer, Parry showed, was no ‘writer’ at all. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not ‘written,’ but had been composed orally, drawing on traditional ways that went back centuries.” – Literary Hub
Because Of COVID, TV Production Had To Change The Way It Works. Some Of Those Changes May Stick.
“It has been a year of struggle and experimentation for the television industry, which has had to learn on the fly while trying to create new diversions for an unusually captive home audience. … Some changes could outlast the pandemic. Just as the nature of schooling and office work has been transformed as millions have learned to function remotely, television has adapted as well, with showrunners, actors and crews all forced to innovate, tweak and change.” – The New York Times
Play Something, Netflix’s New Weapon Against Viewers’ Decision Fatigue
“Today, the company is launching Play Something, a new viewing mode designed to make it easier for the indecisive among us to quickly find something to watch. … The goal of this new shuffle feature is to eliminate, or at least ease, the Peak TV-era anxiety so many of us feel while trying to find something to watch” among the countless options available. – Vulture
Microsoft Is Changing Its Default WORD Font… And A Billion People Will Read Differently
“A lot of customers, they really don’t even think about fonts or look at fonts. It’s only when they zoom in, that they see a g is different! It’s really [about], once you use them, what feels natural? Are there quirky characters that get in the way? Do the numerals feel right, and readable? I think we’re stretching what’s acceptable to the limits. But they do feel similar.” – Fast Company
‘Live Shows Are About To Come Roaring Back To Full Houses’, Says One Critic
Chris Jones: “There’s real evidence now of pent-up demand. Consider what is happening in Las Vegas. Cirque du Soleil, which has emerged from bankruptcy protection and put its famous productions of both Mystère and O on sale last week …, has seen colossal demand for tickets. … Comedian Dave Chappelle sold 13,000 tickets for his July 2 concert. The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny had 45,000 people in his waiting room, all trying to buy tickets at once. Get the drift, Chicago entertainment peeps? People are ready.” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Florida Boosts Arts Funding by 24%
“The 2021-22 budget plan agreed to by the Florida House and Senate and sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis includes $26.7 million in two of the four budget categories that provide allocations for arts and cultural organizations and individual artists. That marks a 24 percent boost over 2020, when the Legislature approved $20.2 million in three categories.” – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Medieval Treasures Stolen In 1989 Recovered In Sicily
“After being stolen more than 30 years ago from a village in Italy’s Tuscany region, a group of stolen medieval artifacts has been located by police in the home of an antiques collector in Sicily. In that house near Catania, the police discovered a pilfered reliquary that dates back to the 13th century, as well as other objects including a copper cross and six chalices.” – ARTnews
Paul Kellogg, Director Of Glimmerglass Opera And New York City Opera, Dead At 84
Over 27 years at the helm of the summer opera festival in Cooperstown, NY, Kellogg raised standards, doubled the productions per season, built a new theater, and earned the company a national reputation. In 1996, he took the reins at New York City Opera and began a very productive partnership between the two companies. Unable to fix City Opera’s longstanding financial troubles (and distracted by an ultimately fruitless attempt to find or build a new venue), he retired in 2007, and the company shut down in 2013. – The New York Times
The Rise Of Group Curation — A New Model?
‘We believe in a polyphonic time. Essentially the problem has been about dominant narratives and to get a much wider perspective. It is appropriate today that it is less about a single authorial model and more a collaborative research endeavour. Everything in the world at the moment is leaning towards learning from each other and bring together different expertise and knowledge.’ – Arts Hub
A Philip Roth Bio Is Canceled — A Sea Change In Whether Books Are Published?
“I think this week marks a sea change in publishers’ interest in their authors’ behavior. The cancellation of Bailey’s books came just a day after news broke that hundreds of employees at Simon & Schuster have submitted a petition demanding that the publisher cancel its two-book deal with former vice president Mike Pence and refuse to sign any additional contracts with members of the Trump administration.” – Washington Post
Engagement Readiness Quiz
The verdict in the George Floyd murder trial provides your arts organization with an opportunity to take a very simple quiz to determine its readiness for engaging with communities. Here are three questions. – Doug Borwick
CultureGrrl, the Metropolitan Museum & the Bomb Scare
At this writing, the Metropolitan Museum is safe and so am I. That said, for a brief time during my visit there Monday afternoon, I feared for my life. (Admittedly, I tend to panic when being evacuated due to a bomb scare.) – Lee Rosenbaum
The Forgotten Female Playwrights (150 Of Them!) Of 17th- and 18th-Century France
“Now a growing movement within French theater is reclaiming the work of forgotten female artists, and reviving a lost concept along the way: le matrimoine. Matrimoine is the feminine equivalent of patrimoine — translated as patrimony, or what is inherited from male ancestors. In French, however, patrimoine is also the catchall term to describe cultural heritage. By way of matrimoine, artists and academics are pushing for the belated recognition of women’s contribution to art history, and the return of their plays to the stage.” – The New York Times
Archaeologists Alarmed By Proposed Renovation At Acropolis
“Plans for a major renovation project to the western entrance of the Acropolis have met with strong opposition from archaeologists in Greece and across the world. In an open letter to the public, the signatories, including figures from the universities of Oxford, Durham and Brown, called for the cancellation of a project they believe will lead to the ‘devaluation, concealment and degradation of the greatest archaeological and artistic treasure that has been bequeathed to modern Greece’.” – The Art Newspaper
Samsung Founder’s Heirs To Donate Thousands Of Art Works In Inheritance Tax
The Lee family, including his widow and three children, expects to pay more than 12 trillion won ($10.8 billion) in inheritance taxes, which is more than half the wealth Lee held in stocks and real estate, Samsung said Wednesday. This would be the largest amount in South Korea and more than three times the country’s total estate tax revenue for last year. Giving away the late chairman’s vast collection of art masterpieces would reduce the taxable portions of his estate. – Toronto Star